I would like to introduce a new game in the making, It's not Atari ST related but is inspired by some of the great arcade games of the Atari ST era of the mid to late 80's.The game is Shadow Gangs, and has the look and feel and games like Shinobi, Dragon Ninja and other Arcade ninja games of the era.

Here are some pictures of the game, a music track of the demo level, hope you like it!

Last edited by shadowgangs on Fri Jun 24, 2016 7:25 pm, edited 5 times in total.

I would like to share with you some good news, this month's last weekend I will meet the game background artist Toni Galvez, and we'll be making videos of the game. So an actual game video will be available before the end of this month.

Another great news, I received Shadow Gangs's second and final music track for the demo.

Please find it here, it manages to be even better than the first track, I kept listening to it the whole day and still do now.

It is an exciting prospect to imagine the whole game having music of this quality from start to finish, which was my objective but I feel lucky to work with such a talented artist.

For you guys that wanted a ninja instead of Dan, Dan will transform to a ninja (you'll still play Dan for those that like him the way he is now, but he will transform to a ninja mid level (so he can use the sword and other ninja powers)).

Here an image showing Dan in ninja suit, as well as the first mission boss:

The game is being updated every day, the new backgrounds are under way and they will look nothing like the originals. They will be very detailed and will have an extra parallax layer that will add a lot of atmosphere to the game.

Shadow Warriors is now my inspiration in relation to the backgrounds variations and amount of static object, so expect a completely different and better looking backgrounds.

Other fixes are related to engine fixes, 3 checkpoints instead of 1, new knifeman with a new flying attack type, better AI, fixed camera, some prone guys will now stand up when Dan is near (not all will stand up!) and many fixes and new features have gone in.

Finally I am proud to present the new Shadow Gangs, with new backgrounds (pictures bellow), and many more fixes and enhancements that pictures can't convey.

I am also excited to announce that the Shadow Gangs demo, and the new and final pre Kickstarter video will be both available at the same time at the end of next week, Saturday or Sunday, most probably Sunday 22nd of May.

Aside from preparing the demo, I will now prepare for the kickstarter campaign. To this end, I am going to dress up in big detail what

Shadow Gangs is about, what enemies are there, what levels, what new weapons can Dan and his ninja form use, how they can use it, and what

the ninja form add to Dan capability wise.

Rendez-vous at the end of next week, the demo will be available then for download (pc version), and a new video and final video will be uploaded, and I will also announce the kickstarter date!

I am happy to announce that the Shadow Gangs demo is now available in the downloads section here.

It's the PC version, it should run fine on a 1ghz PC with Intel graphics, but let me know if you have any issues running it.You may need to install Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable here if the Demo won't start, I didn't need to but just in case.

A new music track is also available, here or in the downloads section. It's included in the demo and can be heard if you finish the demo.

The kickstarter date is now set, it's the 25th of June 2016. If you liked the demo and want this game to materialise, please contribute to the crowdfunding.

These kind of games like Shadow Gangs won't be brought back by big game companies, or the likes of Sega, Capcom etc...., they all seem to have moved to 3D and other new fancy gameplay styles etc..., so don't wait for them to release something like Shadow Gangs.

Also feedback on the game all over the internet, here and friends has been very important, and this new demo is showing that. Apart from the new backgrounds, many enhancements and fixes have gone in.

Just to say that I received enough feedback about the difficulty being too hard even in easy mode, so I added 3 more checkpoints on all difficulty modes, and lessened the number of dangerous situations in easy mode.

It should be an easy ride now.(In easy, other modes are still challenging).

I uploaded a new video of me playing in hard mode with melee only (mostly, one miss near the end), and no deaths.

The game also had a speed increase for Dan (and some enemies to keep the balance), as well as sharper melee attacks.I think it plays much better than before.Many other fixes has gone in.

In relation to the kickstarter, Dan in ninja form will have an assault rifle as projectile weapon, I think it's much better this way than having some kind of fire shuriken or super shuriken or the like which was my original intention.

Here is the video that I wanted to do before the kickstarter to show the game potential more:

The Shadow Gangs kickstarter is in it's final hours, and I would like to let anyone who is interested but hesitated for some reasons about the enhancements and changes that the full version will have:

-If the graphic style is an issue, there will be filters available to add scanlines or any other full screen shader effects that are available already for emulators like Mame, Winuae etc...

-Also concerning the graphics, all the characters will be drawn by the same artist who did Dan and the ninajs, this will ensure coherent art and of higher quality.

-The animations frames will be double or tripled in some animation types (dying animation and others).

-A lot of special effects will be added, some using shaders or with added shaders. Blood, bullet trails, better bullet effects, hit effets, smoke etc...these will make the screen busier.

-If you didn't like the game because of lack of diversity, there will be a lot more interactions, Dan will have an inventory to store sepcial weapons and sepcial attacks (magic), there will be elements of search, recovering money, freeying all types of hostages, some elements of adventure/exploration too like using the ninja double jump to get to secret areas.

-The ninja form will allow Dan to take one hit without dying (but will cause him to revert to his fighter form). Also the ninja form will be available at about 10 to 15% of the level start. This will put the difficult a lot down.

-And many many more enhancements and fixes. A full list is in the Kickstarter page.

I would like also to ask you to actually play the current demo, to get a real feel of the game and see it actually on your screen not just on videos.

Bellow is the new Dan as ninja which is being done now by the sprite artist, and the first frames of the attack drone.

Also, if the game succeeds the Kickstarter, all backers without exceptions will get regular milestone builds.

I wanted to share a WIP of Shadow Gangs, showing here boss Freddy.​Still not polished, very buggy, no proper sounds or effects, and many sprites of Dan here will be changed (walk animation and anything which doesn't look good).Also Video quality is not great, I made it with an underpowered laptop.